ISLAMABAD: Pakistani anchorman and YouTuber Imran Riaz Khan was presented in a court in Lahore on Wednesday following his arrest from an airport early in the morning, his lawyer said, adding that his legal team was unaware of the charges against him.
The prominent TV journalist turned promoter of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s political party was picked up from the Allama Iqbal International Airport in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore where he had arrived to catch a flight to Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj.
Riaz was produced in the Model Town lower court of Judicial Magistrate Kamran Zafar on Wednesday afternoon. This is his fifth arrest in a year.
“We are told he [Imran Riaz] is arrested in a case registered against him in Lahore Model Town,” Riaz’s lawyer Azhar Siddique told Arab News, naming a prominent locality in the city.
“We aren’t aware of the charge against Imran Riaz and why there was an urgency by police to arrest him while he was leaving for Hajj.”
The lawyer said a habeas corpus petition to judge the legality of Riaz’s arrest had been moved in the Lahore High Court and would be heard today.
Riaz, who has more than 5.7 million followers on X and millions more on other social media platforms, took on the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies after ex-PM Khan was removed from power in April 2022 and blamed the army for being behind his ouster. He was picked up in May last year and returned home in September, with authorities giving no indication of where he had been.
He was last arrested in February this year over his alleged involvement in an anti-judiciary campaign on social media.
Human rights groups have widely accused Pakistani security agencies of being behind the disappearances of political workers, leaders and rights activists, allegations that authorities deny.
Pakistan has a controversial record regarding media freedom and the safety of journalists. Media personnel have frequently complained of being targeted by state authorities for their work while some have been attacked and killed, and others have left the country citing threats to their life.
The South Asian country was ranked 150 in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index published by RSF.